SVHS vs VHS - It REALLY Could Have Been Something Great! Live Video Comparison
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- After the introduction of VHS and the resulting home video craze, it was decided by the powers that be that an improvement needed to be made to good ol' VHS video tape... It needed better quality video. Enter Super VHS, or SVHS for short. In this video, we'll explore what S-VHS actually is and how it compares to standard VHS video recordings in an actual live video test of both formats.
*The VHS and SVHS recordings were cropped to 16:9 to fit within the frame. The audio for the comparison segments was recorded on the HiFi tracks on the tape, so the entire segments are true analog captures on both audio and video.
0:00 Introduction
2:52 SVHS Overview
4:32 Comparison Testing
5:20 VHS Footage
5:46 SVHS Footage
6:30 Conclusion
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#vhsrecording #analog #svhs #ntsc #betamax #vintageelectronics #retrovision - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Some minor details:
1) Lines of resolution in analog video is not the same thing as scan lines. For example NTSC always has 525 scan lines or 262.5 X 2 if you take in the interlacing into account. What lines of resolution really means is the number of lines or dots that can be resolved within a scan line, and above 40% of the video range (0.7 volts). It's analogous to pixels. The term comes from film photography where they measure camera resolution the same way. So a "resolution of 240 lines" means that there is enough high frequency bandwidth to resolve 240 dots within a scan line. But there sill is 525 (or 262.5 x 2) actual scan lines. True broadcast standard definition video is 640 pixels or over "600 lines", So based on that, VHS was rather poor. The accepted formula is 80 lines per megahertz of video bandwidth in the analog world.
2) All analog consumer VCRs and 3/4in Umatic recorded the color separately. This was mandatory due to the lower video bandwidth on lower cost formats. In VHS, the 3.58 mhz chroma side bands are down converted to 767khz. and mixed back to the FM luminance signal that is recorded on. the tape. It is a AM signal using the luminance FM as a bias signal. Since it is an AM recording, noise is a problem. And the reduction of the chroma frequency also reduces the bandwidth of the encoded R-Y, B-Y video signals.
The chroma system in SVHS is functionally identical to any old VHS VCR. What they did on SVHS was to raise the FM carrier frequency so that more luminance video bandwidth could be recorded. But that also demanded new tape formulations to make it work correctly. As we only sense detail in the luminance or B&W portion of the signal, it does look sharper. But SVHS did nothing to improve the chroma bandwidth or the noise that resulted form the AM recording process which gave VHS the "cartoon" look for color.
The Svideo jack is another discussion which has nothing to do with SVHS. In fact Svideo connectors could have been added to any standard VHS machine. What Svideo does is to keep the chroma and luminance separated, in theory from the mastering process all the way to the consumer display. The bulk of the NTSC artifacts such as dot crawl and the rainbow on Jonny Carson's Houndstooth sport jacket occur when the luminance and chroma signals are combined for composite video. So if you can avoid combining them and then breaking them apart multiple times, you have less NTSC artifacts. Then why didn't plain VHS VCRs, which also record the chroma separately, ever have Svideo connectors? I believe because the quality on standard VHS was so poor, any benefit from Svideo connections would have been negligible. Additionally why add a feature to standard VHS that could potentially undermine the market for SVHS VCRs. Also keep in mind that Svideo is NOT component video where RGB or Y, RY,BY are three separate video signals. Only some broadcast formats such as Sony Betacam (not Betamax) or Panasonic M2 recorded true component video. Of course digital VTRs changed all of that. Svideo is kind of in between composite and component video and in reality did little to improve the image over composite as broadcast and most movie mastering was still composite until the mid 1990s when we went digital.
You can play an SVHS tape on a standard VHS VCR. But you will observe dropouts and noise on bright white portions of the image. This is because standard VHS cannot handle the higher FM frequencies used in SVHS. The brighter the video signal, the higher the FM frequency. A dark dim TV show or movie on SVHS may play fine on a standard VHS VCR, But watch what happens with white credits on a dark background.
Excellent explanation! Just want to add that some VHS machines had SQPB (S-VHS quasi playback) that could play, as the name implies, SVHS tapes without these problems. But the output is still VHS quality.
Most later standard VHS VCRs do support Super VHS playback. It will only be at standard VHS quality, but otherwise the image will look fine. This was called "Quasi S-VHS" or "SQPB" (S-VHS Quasi PlayBack). And if you did have a Super VHS VCR, S-VHS ET allowed you to make nearly-full-quality S-VHS recordings on inexpensive regular VHS tapes, although it was more prone to noise and dropouts.
Came here to say something like that, but wasn't going to do ANYWHERE near as good a job, so, upvote is all I can do... :)
Very nice synopsis. One thing that I'd add is that the 525 vertical scan lines included the vertical blanking interval, containing sync and equalizing pulses, and also technical lines like VITS and VIRS. It's the VBI, not overscan that makes the difference between the number of lines used for picture and the total of 525. Likewise, each TV line has a sync pulse and other voltages, along with a color burst when applicable that aren't normally visible.
Because the number of TV lines is fixed, it makes a handy reference to measure horizontal resolution. A broadcast quality TV signal has as much as 330 TV lines of horizontal resolution. However, studio cameras typically boasted 700 or more lines of resolution. The first digital recording formats used a frame of 720x486 pixels to preserve that.
The recording method that you're referring to is called color-under. Broadcast quality VTRs recorded composite video directly, and that was called direct color. Because color-under required the luminance and chrominance portions of the NTSC signal to be separated, a consumer VCR had two video signals internally, Y and C. Dubbing the Y and C signals without turning them back into composite video was simpler, and therefore cheaper. That's the only reason why the S-video connector exists, for dubbing. This was only an issue because comb filters weren't used. U-matic and some industrial Betamax machines had "dub" ports that transferred the RF signal intact, right off the tape heads. That was the superior method, but Sony owned the patents for it.
As for component video in consumer gear, it's a gimmick. No broadcast TV studio or transmission facility ever used component video, except for chroma keying, and then we used RGB from the camera. Y',B-Y,R-Y is encoded video, and the only thing that can happen by sending them separately is that they'll arrive at different times and make the video worse. That's why composite video (and direct color) was king.
Lines of resolution is measured on a square area so the actual number was third bigger. I have heard that the broadcast TV was about 330 lines.
I'm sorry but you misunderstood what "240 lines of resolution" means.
As you mention, each video frame is 525 lines (625 lines in PAL). This is true for the air waves as well as for the picture that gets recorded on a VCR (there were some obscure early video recording systems that only recorded one field but I'll ignore those).
The 240 lines that you're talking about are not vertical (video) lines but the number of vertical lines that could be recorded in a single video line, i.e. the number of times that the video signal could go from black to white on a single line of video without losing too much quality. On a high quality broadcast NTSC signal, the resolution is about 640 lines (on PAL it's about 720) if I remember correctly.
Both VHS and S-VHS record luminance and chrominance signals separately, but on S-VHS there is more separation than on VHS. They are basically frequency-modulated, and the modulated signal is recorded by the spinning heads, at the same time. In both VHS and S-VHS, the luminance signal is modulated at the same base frequency so if you play an S-VHS tape on a VHS machine, you'll see a black and white picture. But the luminance and chrominance signals are modulated further apart on S-VHS than on VHS. That way there is more room in the modulated signal to record more resolution. It also requires better tape (with smaller magnetic particles). You can drill a hole in the right place in a high quality VHS cassette and make S-VHS mode recordings with an S-VHS recorder. You'll get a higher quality recording than VHS but not as good as S-VHS on S-VHS tape. Of course, quality is highly dependent on the quality of the tape because it's still an analog format.
I still have my PAL S-VHS recorder from Europe, and it has a Teletext decoder attached to it for VPS/VPT (Video Programming System / Video Programming via Teletext). It made it possible to program the VCR by going to the Teletext page that showed program information for the station you were tuned into and programming the VCR to record a scheduled show with a single button. And it would automatically record the show even if it was rescheduled or started early or late. It also allows watching Teletext from recorded tapes, but that really only works with tapes that are recorded in S-VHS mode, because the teletext signal needed a resolution of 320 (or was it 360?) lines: Each Teletext line of text was transmitted as a video line with 40 bytes of digital information: seven or eight bits per character plus a parity bit.
There was also a VHS-Pro format that had an even higher quality / resolution than S-VHS. My college had a Panasonic VHS-Pro editing studio ca. 1992 but it wasn't used much and I've never seen the format anywhere else.
I think you might be slightly mistaken as well. It is true that a VHS machine does output 525 lines, which is the NTSC standard, but VHS tape itself can only resolve approximately 43% of that detail. This is where the standard ~240 lines of horizontal resolution is obtained in most literature on VHS.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel The comment by @andydelle4509 explains it more clearly than I did but he's basically saying what I wanted to say.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel nope, @JacGoudsmit is correct (mostly) and you're wrong. NTSC is 525 lines all day, every day. Those lines are counted _vertically._ The "240 lines of horizontal resolution" are _measured_ and measured _horizontally._ The name "TV lines" comes from early test charts (the old "Indian head" ones that came and went before you were born) that literally had lines drawn on them. Vertical lines measured horizontal resolution. The closer together the lines were, the more RF bandwidth was needed to resolve them. The NTSC broadcast RF limit was 4.2 MHz, which was equivalent to 330 TV lines of horizontal resolution. The 525 line raster doesn't change. And 240 TVL resolution is a bit optimistic; real tested numbers were more like 220 TVL for VHS, and 230 for VHS HQ. At 3.0 MHz luma bandwidth for both, the theoretical maximum is 236 TVL, so those numbers are also within the bounds of reason.
What @JacGoudsmit got wrong was the broadcast numbers. A NTSC signal with 4.2 MHz bandwidth, carrier to -3 dB will have up to 330 TVL of horizontal resolution. That's it. On a closed circuit, like in a TV studio, it can be more, but not over the air. The "640 lines" sounds like VGA resolution of 640x480 pixels, and "720 lines" sounds like D-1 resolution of 720 samples / line. Neither of those are TV lines though. Although the pixel originates with analog TV, pixels and TVL don't have a 1:1 relationship, so they're not interchangable.
@@VintageElectronicsChannelAn analogue format can't actively drop scan lines, it would take complicated digital circuitry to achieve that which those machines didn't have. Therefore VHS has full 525(NTSC)/625(PAL SECAM) scan lines, it can't help doing so.
"Lines of resolution" does not refer to these scan lines. It means left-right resolution. The wording is ambiguous which leads to misunderstanding, measuring horizontal resolution in MHz would be less confusing. Broadcast quality is about 5 MHz, VHS can only deliver 2.4 MHz, ish.
Actual picture content is only 480 scan lines(!) in NTSC, 575 in PAL/SECAM not due to overscan, but because the vertical blanking signal uses up 45 (NTSC)/50(PAL SECAM) lines. There's no image information there, which is why in digital applications like DVD and standard definition digital broadcast, only 480/576 lines are transmitted. DVD players and digital settop boxes with analogue out recreate a standard NTSC/PAL signal by adding 45/50 black lines to each frame.
The reason why we will _not_ be looking at HDTV as "rubbish" is because digital recording is perfect. Although you can increase resolution, doing so doesn't increase "quality". As long as you can't see individual pixels at normal viewing distance, there's nothing to be gained by adding more. Only large theaters will benefit from 8K and whatever comes after. HDR and WCG will provide noticeable change, but to some, this change will be more annoying than pleasing. And if you've never seen a video recorded on Type C videotape, you don't know just how good analog video recording actually was back in the day.
The color RECORDING is identical for VHS and S-VHS ! 627KHz AM Colorunder. However, the separate Y/C cables enable a higher Y resolution than is possible via a Y/C separation filter based on a CVBS source (broadcast tuner, laser disc, VHS recorder). Many other “experts” on YT have already explained this incorrectly. TV engineer from Hamburg.
this is a common misunderstanding, yes.
fun fact : it might be good to remember (not to you, of course :D) than early philips VCR (N150x) had a separated Y/C din socket on their back :)
@@whaka54000 The VCR Recorders from PHILIPS only have a CVBS Output from the Factory. DIN or BNC. However, I suggested a Circuit Diagram to pick up Y and C separately from PHILIPS VCR Recorders. th-cam.com/video/4BMRAhz2ruk/w-d-xo.html
I remember seeing SVHS at the electronic big box stores in the 90s but nobody I knew ever owned any SVHS decks. Even the media seemed rare, and I was an active VHS user into the early 00s. Even when TiVo showed up I would copy my favorite shows out to VHS.
The TiVo displaced VHS for most time-shifting, (DVD took over for pre-recorded movies,) and was replaced with a cable-provided HDR (which wasn't as usable as the TiVo, but had better quality and could record multiple at a time,) then streaming knocked all of it out.
I'm still using my two TiVo Roamio DVRs, and using PyTiVo to save the MPEG files to a file server. Beats the pants off streaming!
On a good CRT, VHS was much more "watchable". The analog to digital conversion and interlacing conversion really do a number to the quality on modern screens!
Agree. It makes VHS look much worse than it really is.
Therres also dvhs to but my machine stopped working. @@VintageElectronicsChannel
If you do that much VHS watching, look for an old Faroudja Line Doubler to clean up the analog video. Yves Faroudja was involved in the S-VHS spec, so you can't do better. I used a Faroudja Digital Format Translator as a TV engineer to transcode old videos for broadcast. My first HDTV had a Faroudja chip in it, too.
True, also our screens are much bigger today. I remember the Philips Combi 14” in my room and the VHS recordings of TV programs almost looked like the live show.
Good quality captures don't lose much, but there can be major differences between the worst & best video captures of the same material. Even good captures, such as on a DVR, can have a clear pretty difference from the best. We use pal rather than ntsc here, but the captured video shown here seems considerably lower quality than what I'd expect, even the S-VHS capture looks pretty poor. Presumably something like an easycap capture device was used &/or the vcr was in bad shape.
For an example of how a VHS capture can look, video below is from a standard VHS tape played in an older VHS vcr. It's a pre-recorded movie in this case, but should be no better than recording your own quality source to vhs:
th-cam.com/video/EIyUHkkyYJU/w-d-xo.html
There's no sound as I didn't have the original cable for the capture device(with TBC builtin, but TBC likely wasn't needed for this tape), I was using a DIY cable for video only. It's been deinterlaced, upscaled & had some moderate filtering applied, though the filters didn't make much difference for this tape. It also looked good before being upscaled, but youtube ruins lower res uploads.
CRTs are indeed generally a better match to watch VHS tapes, but I think the quality of the conversion on modern TVs may vary considerably between TVs. I've got a 10+ year old 46" TV and a VHS tape I played recently looked perfectly fine.
Am still using a VHS player in my audio video setup because there's a catalog of films we have on that format that we don't have on any digital format, and the grandkids are perfectly content. And they enjoying putting the cartridges in, rewinding them, and taking them out - the cartridges are large and easy for them to handle. It's like it's kind of a goid format for choldren's content. Can go and easily look over what's on the shelf to pick something out - lot to be said for tangible content vs cloud streaming content.
SVHS was always great to me. I always had at least two. The only thing that beat it was my laserdisc player. 😊
Yes it's hard to make a comparaison in the digital domain but it can be done with some measures, It must be captured in lossless AVI via S-Video and de-interlaced using high quality de-interlacer such as QTGMC and upscaled to 4k before put on the timeline, NLE software tend to do horribly when it comes to upscaling, never crop the picture, just add black bars on the sides, preferably use high end consumer S-VHS machines due to the fact that those broadcast machines are heavily worn due to excessive daily use. If you want to make a comparaison 2.0, I can provide you with ready to use 4K samples using one of my high end machines I have. One thing to note that S-VHS only improved luma, Chroma remained unchanged, about 40 levels horizontally.
i still use my 80s made JVC vhs recorder
Yeah I had SVHS and still got three of them. Even got a 1989 jvc svhs machine with only 50 hours on the head and works fine. Also got a top end model with low hours that’s got TBC in it and FireWire too. They are still good if viewed right. I also use to repair vcrs and done lots and more than I can remember. I still do electronics but not vhs no more unless one comes to me. I still have all my test kit for vhs lol.
Maybe you can answer me a (probably stupid) question: what you need to change in a NTSC VTR to convert it in a PAL one. Because mechanical parts are the same, I guess.
Of course, I don't ask that to use a home VHS from USA in Europe, can be much more stupid that the question, but yes a professional one: you can find there much more and with a better solutions (ex., S-VHS JVC 822).
@@andorcor your better to buy a NTSC to PAL converter on the output. You can get good quality ones or rip the video to a PC and convert it in there. To turn a NTSC vcr into PAL is a lot of work because you would have to change many components. It’s hard to explain because how NTSC is do so different from PAL. Also tape speed is different to between the format. I could explain it better but would take ages to put down in writing. One of my latests models plays both formats, so might be better looking out for a multi format. Sorry I not explained it well, it’s one of those things I can see in my head but can’t seem to explain it easy on a post.
When growing up in the '90s, I knew SVHS existed. But never knew anyone who had a SVHS recorder. I've seen Betamax and Video2000 machines, but never SVHS.
I had one of JVC's early flagship consumer S-VHS decks. It cost a great deal but it was incredibly versatile and robust. I used it until television broadcasting here went digital. Initially, the TV I paired it with was probably about 54cm (21") but I soon replaced it with a 66cm (26") JVC TV. The integration was perfect - a single SCART cable.
The quality improvement was noticeable. On the 66cm, S-VHS was very nearly as good as broadcast. It's a shame it didn't take off, but not terribly surprised it didn't. JVC still couldn't figure out how to get everyone to upgrade by the time they did W-VHS and D-VHS. I wonder if they tried to do backwards compatibility, laying down a VHS signal plus the S-VHS signal higher up on the tape. It probably would've needed much more expensive tape, though, and much more involved circuitry.
interestingly, they did release VHS decks that could read S-VHS tapes, but not make them. Of couraw, that was too little too late.
I don't believe the current 4k will be greatly improved, as it is reaching the performance of the human eye. And VHS looked better on a CRT TV. great video cheers
No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately, they are both recorded by the same heads, they are composite "colour under" systems. Two heads are used to record two tracks [fields] of video in one revolution of the head drum, two fields making up one interlaced frame of video on playback. One of the problems with S-VHS was athough the luminance frequencies were shifted up to improve resolution, the colour bandwidth remained the same. This is one reason why S-VHS was never taken up seriously by broadcasters. Consumer Betamax had a slightly better colour bandwidth and generally looked ever so slightly better in colour fidelity.
An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format. Betacam [not to be confused with Betamax] has four heads in the drum to record colour and luminance on their own separate tracks. In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance, interlaced together to produce a single frame of video during playback. This is called "component recording." VHS and S-VHS were not component recording systems. The reason S-VHS recordings couldn't be played back on standard VHS recorders was because the higher luminance frequencies were too high for a standard VHS recorder to process.
Capturing analogue video shouldn't degrade the quality of capture at all. In fact they should appear indistinguishable if done properly. I do this for a living all the time. Essentially you will need machines that are in tip-top shape and operating to spec, a good time-base corrector is absolutely essential, and appropriate equipment to properly capture the video. If you are trying to capture from an S-VHS machine, use the S-Video output for the best result. I use a Blackmagic Teranex to process the video in real time, and output it to the resolution and frame rate I want, and I then take the output of the Teranex using Serial Digital Interface [a professional industry standard] to a Blackmagic SDI capture card in the computer. Captures are indistinguishable to the source material.
"No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately"
The reality is the opposite of what you said, i.e., all of the well-known ones record chroma and luma separately (and there is at least one not-so-well-known one, W-VHS, which records separate Y, Pb, and Pr, like Betacam does).
"they are composite "colour under" systems."
Yes, they are all color under (except for W-VHS, which was an analog HD format that recorded component video [YPbPr]), and your phrase "composite color under" is a contradiction of terms. VHS and others couldn't record an NTSC composite signal directly like e.g., professional VTRs could, such as 2" or 1" Quad, because it didn't have enough bandwidth, so the "color under" system was devised. With color under recording, the color information (chroma) is extracted from the composite signal and recorded to tape at a much lower frequency, thereby drastically reducing the color bandwidth compared to the original NTSC composite signal that it's recording.
Since the composite signal it's recording inherently has to be split into separate chroma and luma in order to selectively reduce the frequencies (the chroma frequency gets reduced by a lot more than the luma frequency does, for obvious reasons), it wouldn't make any sense to then recombine them before recording them to tape, which is why that doesn't happen. Chroma and luma are recorded separately to tape in all color under systems. And although recording separate chroma and luma to the tape seems like it would be higher quality, in the case of color under, it isn't, because the original signal it's recording is composite, so recording composite directly to the tape would be the least lossy method, but like I said, it doesn't have enough bandwidth for that.
All color under systems can benefit from an S-Video (Y/C) output, because that eliminates additional losses that happen when the VCR recombines the separate chroma and luma on the tape during playback to output a composite signal, and when the TV's comb filter has to split them back into Y/C again.
"An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format."
No, Betacam is an example of separate Y, Pb, Pr recording (3 components, not 2).
"In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance"
That's not how it works. You need to look up a diagram of how Betacam records a video signal. For starters, it doesn't record chroma at all. Like I said, for color information it records two color-difference signals (Pb and Pr) rather than a single color/chroma signal. Pb is the difference between blue and luma (also known as B − Y) and Pr is the difference between red and luma (also known as R − Y). Like I said, W-VHS does the same thing, though it has a different approach to accomplishing it.
Hi there. The video's description says 'ol but it should be ol' as the apostrophe replaces a missing letter. Hope this helps 😊
I knew that. Not sure why I put it on the wrong end. I'm usually the grammar police. Lol
@@VintageElectronicsChannel I'm glad it's not just me 😆
I'm the guy who uses correct punctuation, capitalization, and grammar in text messages. Lol. You're not the only one!
@@VintageElectronicsChannel I used to even do that during the SMS days! Meant I had to shorten what I could say, given the character limit 😆
I had a SVHS recorder. The quality difference was staggering at the time.
SVHS to me was a format that was more affordable to have compared to Betacam, my family had SVHS decks and SVHS cameras but also when looking at Betacam SP professional decks and MUSE HD makes you wonder what an alternate universe could've been in terms of quality for the home around the 90s if tech moved just a little faster in a different direction, DVHS is also a format that should've made it earlier and cheaper but DVD was still the mainstream preference until Blu-ray came along.
all that was really missing wasn't adequate tech, of course, but adequate promotion. They needed to have lined up commitment from various Hollywoid studios to commit to providing some high profile content on the format and electronics stores needed to be setup to all ge displaying the regular VHS vs SVHS, as well as the same thing at video rental stores - get the public drooling for the much superior image quality. That would take a lot of marketing investment and clearly there was no ability to pony that up, but if the studios could have been convinced that going to a superior format would be good for them, then there could have been some marketing cost sharing via a consortium. Yet more What If History musings...
I had a few SVHS decks in the 90s. My problem was the cost of the tapes, for the price of one 3hr SVHS tape, you could get 3, 4, or even 5 good brand 3hr VHS tapes and the price never came down. They were sold as a premium product at a premium price, displayed behind the cashier like rays of a magnetic halo individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves.
I don't think I've ever heard a better description! "Rays of a magnetic halo, individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves". That's great! So true. They were very pricey at the time.
I still have a box of Fuji pro-grade SVHS tapes in their plastic clamshells. (We would buy them in 10-packs back in the day.) They were pricey, but you got what you paid for.
I have a Casablanca Avio digital recorder with VHS and S-VHS inputs and outputs ..( as well as a firewire input -output ) It's almost brand new and works perfectly . I don't know why I keep it, as it's never used ....
It is basically a mini NLE editing computer with video capture capability, but since it only captures into mpeg-2 or DV, it is basically useless, You want to capture lossless, de-interlace and encode to a modern efficient codec.
@@Capturing-Memories ' basically useless ' ? i edited a decades worth of VHS and some digital footage with it effortlessly ..even recorded sport from directly connected Tv and edited to suit ..in minutes ...no rendering ( except when using effects ) .. You've got that all wrong mate
@@CaptainDarrick Lol, When did you do that? 20 years ago? In Pentium era you can only do lossy mpeg-2 or DV, Lossless was only possible in the professional world using digital tape format such as D1 and digibeta, That gadget is a novelty now, you are only keeping it for nostalgic purposes, now you know why you are keeping it.
@@Capturing-Memories Yes, it was twenty years ago ...so what ? I still can pull it out if need convenience and speed .. I don't care that is not up to date . I have 300 vinyl albums too , most bought before you were born ...perhaps I should just throw them out too ?
@@CaptainDarrick Facts don't care about feelings, move on.
7:37 Yes I could, if I can watch something in 340p then VHS would work too! but SVHS preferred
Man, NTSC on VHS does look terrible. PAL looks much better in a digitised video.
Did you record in anamorphic widescreen, or did you crop to 16:9?
And for the cherry on top of the cake, I will release the first film on S-VHS in maybe 40 years in 2024, so keep an eye out.
Let me know when you release that. I'd be interested in seeing that! It was cropped to fit, so there's some loss due to that as well.
hi i never spy the format till had to find about format i did have vhs hi-fi because my bro and mates had it
i used it for a long time till i got betacam deks note alot of my recording went on the computer and i used
betacamfor the old video look
I have S-VHS tapes I will never get to see.
That's a shame. The curiosity would kill me. I'd have to see what's on them.
It's not right to say SVHS recorded luma and chroma separately. BetacamSP does that. SVHS is a colour under format, the chroma performance is ghastly just like VHS, making it utterly useless for broadcast use. SVHSC pretty much bombed, it couldn't compete with Hi8 which was smaller, has much longer running time and was supported by more manufacturers. SVHS would have done better if the chroma performance had been improved, not just luma.
I think that Yours SVHS sample was like VHS. SVHS is closer to DVDs. I only few times in my life saw so low quality VHS like Yours and i doubt that it was any professional recordings.
It's my capture device. I've since upgraded.
I really loved this video. I always tell the younger generation that they don't know how good they have it - but tell people of my generation that 4K will be considered "crap" in the future and they laugh at me. You're the first person I've seen touch on this point.
Great video!
Thanks for watching! Folks think 4k (or 8k) is the best it will ever be. Yeah, we thought the same thing back in the day. Lol
“9”
Also, IIRC, a frame of chroma was only sampled every-other frame. So you could see a scene change with the new luminance and previous frame's chroma.
Not true. Analog chroma wasn't sampled, it was a continuous-time function that went in real time along with the luma.
Thanks for a great video! As an 80s tech fanatic, I just recently started collecting SVHS gear. I now got a Mitsubishi top of the line SVHS player, 2x Panasonic DP-200 SVHS videocameras and a couple of SVHS tapes. I havent payed around with this all much yet, as I just dont have the space where I live now. Will subscribe to your channel because this was a very good lesson!
Thanks for watching! I appreciate the compliment.
3:17 - while it's true that S-VHS records luma and chroma separately, that's no different from regular VHS. So it can't be the difference. What is different is that S-VHS uses hi-band recording, taking advantage of a better magnetic medium to record more luminance bandwidth than is possible with regular iron oxide tape. Hi-band recording is not new, it has been used since Quadruplex.
luma and chroma are not recorded separately in both vhs and s-vhs. they are filtered and go their own way at some point to be processed for being recorded.
at this point, color sub-carrier is just down converted (heterodyne technique) to 626 KHz from 4,43 MHz in pal or 3,58 MHz in ntsc, i'll not dive into secam, as jvc decided to use two techniques incompatible with each other... and thus, secam never was natively part of s-vhs, only transcoding into pal and vice versa was supported by some s-vhs.
on the tape itself, both chroma and luma are recorded alongside with the same 2 video heads.
if they were recorded separately, you'll need 2 video heads and 2 chroma heads. this never existed in vhs or any consumer grade vcr.
I actually still use VHS, not just to watch old recordings and movies, but to record from time to time as well. Is it a perfect format? No. But I look at it this way. VHS is a reliable, consumer friendly, time-tested, and practical format that has existed for over 47 years (since 1976). It may be a standard definition, non-hd format, but even some digital television stations in my area broadcast at 480i. If it’s good enough for television stations, why wouldn’t it be good enough for the average daily user like myself. The sound quality VHS offers is also very good (provided it is in Hi-Fi stereo). Considering all of this, why stop using VHS just because it’s an old format when it still has it’s uses? I believe in using both new, state of the art technology, as well as sticking to some technologies that may be old, but are still useful.
I'm with you 100% on that. If it works and you enjoy using it, there's no reason to stop.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel It’s good to see that other people agree!
What is a pity is that there is a quality gap between present day digital video and the old day's super 8 film format. I have digitized super 8 from my visit to the US in 1975 that is better quality then my Video8 tapes from my visit to the US in 1989. And in 2016 I was again in the US, now with a Panasonic digital camera. Times are a changing!
I've digitized a lot of the super8 video from when I was young, and most of it looks great.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel That's fine, but my point is that the (digitized) super8 analogue film has better quality then Video8 .
Totally agree with you there. Video8 never really impressed me much. Even Hi8 seemed soft.
Thanks for the video! Greets from Marcel The Netherlands in Europe 👍🙂
Greetings, Marcel! I visited the Netherlands a couple times when I was a child. Still remember it fondly. In fact, I believe some of the footage I used in my Super8 film conversion video was from my first time there.
what im suprised about standard vhs is that picture quality from old 80s player looks identical to a late 90s player
There really wasn't a whole lot that could be done to increase picture quality but keep them all compatible. That's why SVHS was its own format. The introduction of VHS HQ in the early 1980s improved quality a little, but the narrower heads needed to record at the extended play speeds (EP/SLP) ended up negating any improvement in that system.
Is a shame vcr’s stopped including headphone jacks, and input audio meters. These basic features are included even on the cheapest Cassatt decks. Why did vcr’s strip these basic features? I cannot believe it would cost very much to include them. They wrecked VCR’s doing this.
I agree. If you look at the average VCR user in the 80s and 90s who couldn't even set the clock, it's not surprising they would eliminate features most wouldn't use. Especially when they starting building them to hit a budget.